Monday, November 12, 2012

Surprise Snowfall

Yesterday the weather forecast was calling for a chance of flurries with no more than a 1cm accumulation. Well, the powers that be got it wrong. It started snowing around 7pm, right as Paige was driving herself to a friend's house, and didn't stop until sometime in the middle of the night leaving us with more like 5cm of snow.

I was fairly worried because Paige had never driven alone in snow before and Cam, who was at work from 3-11, hasn't driven in snow for over a year. Paige got home safe and sound at 10:30 and said that it hadn't been too bad. Turns out, her definition of "not too bad" is my definition of "pretty bad". Cam left work at 11:30 with instructions from me to take it slow. About 20 minutes later I got a text from her which turned into me actually calling her. She had slid through an intersection which completely freaked her out and caused her to have a panic attack. So Paige and I got out of our pjs, got dressed and drove clear across town to rescue Cam.

The conditions on the highway were awful. The snow was falling like mad and the roads had not been plowed. I had to drive at 60km/h the entire way. It felt like we would never get to Cam. But eventually, about 30 minutes later, we found her parked on the side of the road trying to calm herself down. We quickly did a driver switcharoo with me driving Cam's car and Paige driving mine. I tell ya, that was a long drive home. I found out that Cam's new all-weather tires are definitely not as good as my snow tires. I was sliding quite a bit so I understood why she had freaked out. Paige was driving behind me (confident as all get-out...just like her dad!) but I was going pretty slow so that I wouldn't lose sight of her in my rear view mirror. Once again we never got above 60km/h so it felt like the longest drive home ever.

By 1am we were home again safe and sound. Cam was ever so grateful that we had come to rescue her and I was deeply relieved that our adventure was over.

The scene this morning (after some of the snow had already started melting)...

I think it may be time for me to put my lounge chair away for the winter.

The patio furniture can stay though because it's in such bad shape that it will have to be replaced next year anyway.